The day he lost the California primary Barack Obama said his
campaign has unified Americans of all backgrounds in pursuit of a
"common purpose." Three weeks later, in Texas, he said the nation
needs "leaders who can inspire the American people to rally behind
a common purpose and a higher purpose."
As long ago as 2000, Sen. John McCain similarly invited voters
to "believe in a national purpose that is greater than our
individual interests." Winning the GOP nomination has hardly
changed his mind on this point.
Obama and McCain appear to agree that Americans should have
a common, national purpose. Notice the singular,
indefinite article. Americans do not pursue a multitude of purposes
but rather, one purpose.
The desire for a higher purpose is nothing new. Progressives
have been demanding that American follow a national purpose for a
century at least. The Progressive writer Herbert Croly (the founder
of the New Republic) saw the American state as means of
attaining a common, national purpose which he identified with "a
morally and socially desirable distribution of wealth." Obama and
his supporters would no doubt agree.
Croly also had nothing but contempt for such self-interested
activities as business and the pursuit of wealth. Individuals, he
argued, should rise above mere commerce. Sen. McCain believes, as
he put it during the GOP debate prior to the California primary,
that "patriotism not profit" motivates a true leader.
Hence McCain believed that Mitt Romney, a mere businessman
turned one-term governor, could never truly lead the nation.
TO BE SURE, the two candidates would pursue different ideas about
our common purpose. President Obama would seek to redistribute
wealth to reduce inequality. The voters who receive this windfall
would be satisfied and no doubt supportive of the policy and the
new president. Some voters who would be taxed to provide the money
for redistribution would also be satisfied.
But others who pay the taxes to support the redistribution would
not be happy. They might deny that the nation has a common purpose
to make wealth more equal. At that point, the nation would not have
a common purpose but rather disagreement about what the government
should do.
Sen. Obama believes such disagreements can be overcome by
leaders who inspire citizens to transcend their disagreements. That
transformation is unlikely. The economist Alberto Alesina has found
that Americans are not bothered much by inequality compared to
Europeans.
Sen. McCain has emphasized the importance of winning the war
against terrorism. It is true that threats to national survival
unite a nation. After Pearl Harbor, the nation worked largely as
one to defeat the Axis powers. The same could be said prior to 1968
about the Cold War in general; almost all Americans supported
efforts to stop the spread of Communism.
But Iraq is not a war of national survival. According to
President Bush, it is a war to improve the lives of a foreign
people by bringing them the benefits of democracy. Sen. McCain has
stalwartly defended the effort in Iraq; he may well see a crusade
to improve other lands as a national purpose that should trump
individual interests.
Many, sometimes most, Americans do not agree. Polls that ask
whether the war has been worth the cost have garnered deeply
divided responses from the public. The war divided the nation
rather than united citizens behind a common purpose.
THE PROBLEM HERE is not just that Americans do not like this war or
that idea of equality. The problem is that both Obama and McCain
misunderstand the American political tradition.
Americans are not soldiers in an army seeking victory in war, or
employees of a business seeking to maximize its profits. They are
not members of a church defined by their common effort to save
sinners or aid the poor. The United States is not an organization
pursuing a single, common purpose.
It is rather a government instituted by individuals to protect
their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In
exercising those rights, individuals will pursue many purposes and
many ways of living. This ideal of individual liberty and limited
government has little in common with Progressive crusades to
enforce an equality of condition or to create democracies in far
off lands.
Neither Thomas Jefferson nor Ronald Reagan will be on the
presidential ballot this year. Two Progressives rather like
Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt will be there, talking about big
sticks, crusades, and "reform."
Once in office, however, the new president will have to enlist
ordinary Americans in pursuit of a common, national purpose. At
that moment, the new president will discover that American
individualism was not dead but merely sleeping in 2008.
topics:
Taxes, John McCain, Barack Obama, Business, Iraq, Communism
